


sweet upon the tongue

by sunsmasher



Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: F/M, Pre-Canon, Rape/Non-con Elements, a sole incidence of good sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-27
Updated: 2018-12-27
Packaged: 2019-09-28 11:51:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17182460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunsmasher/pseuds/sunsmasher
Summary: When Kyrina has sewn together the bright braids of Jokaste’s hair, curled the locks beside her jaw and pinned up the trailing hairs at the back of her neck, she puts her lips to her lady’s ear and says, “Prince Kastor met with the Veretian Ambassador last night.”





	sweet upon the tongue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nabielka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nabielka/gifts).



> Warnings left unspecific for spoiler reasons, but this is unhappy content with an unhappy ending. Nabielka, I'm sorry to say that one of these spoilers is one of your DNWs. Please see the endnote, where I apologize further.

When Kyrina has sewn together the bright braids of Jokaste’s hair, curled the locks beside her jaw and pinned up the trailing hairs at the back of her neck, she puts her lips to her lady’s ear and says, “Prince Kastor met with the Veretian Ambassador last night.”

Jokaste’s rooms in the palace of Ios befit her position in its court. She can see the sea from her balcony, smell the change in seasons from the wild rainbow of fruit trees planted in the gardens below her windows. The pomegranate harvest, when Damianos accorded her these rooms in the winter. Cherries, when he made thoughtless love to her in the spring. Apricots now, fat and forgotten, bursting like the overtaxed hearts of birds when they drop. The King is dying and the dog star rising and no one has time for the weeping fruit.

“Hm,” Jokaste says, with her painted lips pressed together lightly, so as not to smudge.

She had told Kastor to wait, before he brought in the Veretians. She could stretch out Theomedes’ final days as long as might be necessary, could stretch them far longer than this, so that he would not die in the dog days, when wounds will fester in killing heat and the water grow thick with plague. More men will die for this decision when they take the palace. It’s an unnecessary waste. It’s not the only reason she wanted to wait.

Jokaste unfolds her hands, smoothing them over the folds of her peplos. “Your attention is appreciated as always, Kyrina,” she says as she stands. The linen against her legs is as near to transparent as a prince’s favor can buy. “Do you know what they discussed?”

“I don’t, my lady. Apologies.”

“Not to worry. I’m sure Prince Kastor will be shouting it from the battlements by the time dinner’s done.”

There’s a knock on the chamber door, and another of her handmaidens enters with a slave girl at her heels. It’s the honey-colored one, long hair and dewy skin and a garment so thin and carefully-draped it does little more than accentuate the perkiness of her nipples. She belongs to Damianos. Jokaste is not unfamiliar with her.

“Your Ladyship,” the slave girl says, prostrating herself on the floor. The palace-trained ones all move so smoothly, like eels slipped between the merchant’s hands to show off their spots. “The Crown Prince awaits you in the feasting hall. He will be leading the ceremonies, in the King his father’s absence.”

Jokaste nods her dismissal and the girl rises slowly, retreating without turning away. “Thank you, Lykaios,” Jokaste hears Kyrina say softly, at the door.

 

* * *

 

“There you are!” Damianos booms, some ten minutes after she’s entered the hall. The great space is packed with courtiers and servants and slaves and military men, even more military men than one normally sees around the palace. The celebration is martial in nature tonight, commemorating the anniversary of Theomedes’ subjugation of Isthima. Or perhaps Sicyon. There are many of these anniversaries, and her current inability to tell them apart is likely contributing to the poor nature of her conversation with this general.

Damianos saves her from further embarrassment. “I’ve missed you,” he says, once he has bowed and kissed her hand, because he is honorable, then stepped forward and kissed her lips, because he is boisterous in his love. His father’s general is barely spared a glance. He’s got a smudge of her paint on his lips.

“It has surely been a long eight hours,” she says, wiping the red from his smile with her thumb.

“The longest of my life,” he says. “Will you join me at the head table? The Master of Histories is gesturing at me to get started.”

He kisses her hand again before he slips it into the crook of his elbow. She follows him to the fore of the room.

He gives some grand speech about the glories of his father’s conquests to a room full of men who partook in them. She sits at his left, a place of no small honor, and watches as each rough, bearded face grows red and teary. Damianos speaks this language very well, and Jokaste pays it little attention. Her own role here is to look good at his side, which she always does, but her attentive look requires no actual attentiveness. Kastor, seated to Damianos’ right, is not so skilled in his disguises.

The Veretians approached Kastor directly about support for his claim, troops in return for a lasting alliance. Jokaste had seen the manipulation plainly, when Kastor finally brought it to her, but she’s confident in her ability to outmaneuver the Regent and his stooges when the time comes. Kastor would never be able to do it on its own, but he has at least the barest knowledge of his own deficiencies, he knows he needs Jokaste. He knows she sees the politics he does not. Usually, at least. This meeting with the Ambassador is worrisome.

If he grows confident that he can somehow manage kingship without her, then—

Her eye catches on Damen’s breast, the golden lion flashing brightly at his shoulder. The whole of his person seems to glow in the brilliant lamps of the hall, the burnt evening sun still slanting across the floors. His people’s attention upon him is not faked— he holds them rapt, in awe, as he speaks of his father’s glory. His voice fills the hall like the trumpets of war.

Kastor could not do this.

She knows, of course, that Damianos is a better leader than Kastor. He is more intelligent, more attentive, comparatively, more honest in all his dealings. Kastor knows this as much as Jokaste. It’s why he hates his brother so. But Damianos is not going to be king. If Jokaste can put off the coup a few more weeks, she can—

Damianos is turning to her, grinning, raising his cup.

She can do something. Improve matters. Make Kastor into what he needs to be, maybe.

It’s a toast to her. She stands, dips her head, accepts the approbation.

She just needs a little more time with Damianos.

 

* * *

 

She doesn't eat much during dinner, every dish tasting slightly off to her in a way that bothers Damianos not at all. When she turns her nose up at the cod he helps himself to the platter, and grins shamelessly when she rolls her eyes.

They leave the hall a bit earlier than is perhaps decorous, but Damianos has never cared for decorum when it doesn't suit him, and Jokaste finds herself oddly lenient with him this evening. They slip away just as one old warlord wraps up his story of getting a thousand poorer men than him killed on the field of battle and the next hasn't yet made eye contact— Kastor's dark stare follows them out, but only Jokaste feels it worming into her flesh. Damianos, as ever, is perfectly oblivious.

“They were all watching you tonight,” he says to her, halfway to his rooms, when he’s backed her against a wall and moves his lips against the skin of her throat. He means everyone but his brother, of course. He never means his brother.

"You toasted me in front of a hundred men," she replies, letting her head roll back against the stone. Damianos takes the opportunity to kiss under her jaw, just beneath her ear. "What choice did they have?" "Absolutely none at all," he says, low, and kisses her twice, hard, before she leads him on.

His rooms are massive, a palace unto themselves, and they stumble, stupid and intent upon only each other, across marble and carpet and Damianos’ trailing cape. He manages to set the lion pin carefully on a desk. She makes quick work of his belt. They don’t kill themselves on the way into his moon-bright bedchamber and she says sharply, into his mouth, _“Damianos.”_

“Hm?”

“The _slave?”_

It’s the golden one again, kneeling so patiently in a corner as her master despoils his mistress. Jokaste glares at Damianos, who looks surprised.

“You mean Lykaios?” he says. He wouldn’t have noticed her at all, had Jokaste not pointed her out. This much is obvious. “I can send her away if you’d like.”

_“Do.”_

He keeps kissing her past her irritation, eager to make good even when he does not understand the fault, and she is silly, silly beyond all reasonable allowances, and so finds herself laughing when Damianos gets his arm behind her knees and throws her bodily onto the bed. She bounces among his pillows and laughs again, unable to help herself, as Damianos grins and crawls his way up her body.

"Make sure you don't pull apart my hair," she tells him, a little husky, as his big hands cradle her head, her back, stroke up her sides. "Kyrina braided it today, it's supposed to last me the week."

"Noted, my lady." He's smiling into her skin. "Anything else I should keep in mind this evening?"

"I feel a little— _agh."_

"Sorry, sorry," he says, seduction forgotten as he jerks back, hand falling from her breast. "Did I hurt you?"

The moon is low on the horizon, weighted and golden and nearly outshone by the stars. Damianos is bare, of course, every ridiculous muscled limned in creamy light, and looking at her with real concern in the wrinkle of his brow as Jokaste props herself up on her elbows.

"It's nothing," she says, "I'm just a little sore."

"Are you getting sick? We certainly don't have to— just because _I_ want to—"

Her lips ease into a smile, unforced. "I want to," she tells him. "And I’m not sick, just a little achey. I’m truly fine, we can—"

She's interrupted by his lips on hers, gentle and insistent. "Lie back," he says, finally unpinning her peplos, crumpling the linen in a richly uncaring hand. "I've got just the remedy."

The thing is, she reasons with herself, as he kisses his way down her body, sucks at her clit, puts his tongue to her cunt and makes her sob like some untrained virgin, is that he really is _very_ good.

He nibbles at her neck afterwards, languorous, with an arm across her chest and his hardness pressed to her hip. She'll reward him later. He doesn't seem to mind the wait.

“Makedon certainly seemed energized by your speech,” she mumbles to him, loose and heavy in every limb. She can’t help but rub her thighs together, just a little, to feel the slick between them.

“Did you like the speech?” he asks, muffled.

“It was stirring. I almost thought I was on the battlefield myself, slaughtering Veretians with your father. Makedon?”

“He’s an old soldier who likes war stories, what of it?” He sounds sleepy beside her, the slow rut of his cock against her hip an action neither of them must devote much attention to.

“He spent half the night talking with Antemion and Pheres. All three of them petitioned your father for leave to raid over the border this year.”

Damianos shrugs as best he can with one arm beneath his head and the other holding her tight in the summer heat. “There’s no harm in that. Father was probably wise to keep them south, but I don’t think it would have mattered either way.”

He’ll feel it if Jokaste sighs. She traces the shadowed friezes of his ceiling instead, the carved plaster hunters and hunted wending overhead. It keeps her from tapping at his skin, bird-like, with the nail of her little finger.

“Speaking of my father,” he starts, low, and then she does dig her nail in to his forearm, a pinprick instinct, “—thank you.”

“For what?” she replies, without hesitation. It takes effort. He speaks into her shoulder, she doesn’t look away from the decorated ceiling.

They don’t often discuss Theomedes.

“For— I haven’t been able to spend as much time with you as I’d like, the past few months.” Because he’s been caring for the man she’s killing. “But you’ve been so patient, even when I don’t know how to talk about this.” His lips are moving against her skin. She’s tense all the way down her spine. “So thank you for that. For being here. I—”

There’s only so much she can bear. She turns and cups his face and kisses him and lets him take it for whatever he wants it to be and he responds in kind, hungry, with his hands dragging up her back. She rolls on top of him. He bruises her hips.

“If— when my father gets better,” he pants, hips jerking unsteadily as he tries to slide into her, “I’ll talk to him. About you. About us.”

She crushes her mouth to his, heart tearing like sharpened stone through her chest, ribboning muscle and lung. The groan, when his cock thrusts in, feels punched from her, gusting into his red mouth.

“About the future,” Damen says, “about—”

“Run away with me,” she begs.

“If only,” he sighs, laughing, as he rolls up into her again and again. “If only.”

 

* * *

 

She stands and drips bathwater onto her correspondence for several minutes before she hears the door.

It’s well past the middle of the night, the moon gone, the stars accusatory. Her chiton, unbelted, clings to her back and legs. She didn’t stay in Damianos’ rooms. She rarely does. It won’t be understood as an aberration.

“You smell like him,” Kastor says, putting his hands around her waist.

She closes her eyes. When she reopens them again she is reassembled, sleek and whole, and she leans into his embrace hips-first.

“I do not, I just bathed,” she says, turning her head for his kiss, then: “Oh, I am not some stump in the yards for you two to piss all over like a pair of hounds, get off of me.”

He’s rubbing his face against her neck and she shoves him back, turning in his arms, catching his chin between finger and thumb.

“Animal,” she says, with an admonishing smile, as his dark eyes flash to hers and he nips at her thumb. “I told you to wait to meet with the Ambassador from Vere. Now you’ve rushed my plans.”

His body is a trunk of hard muscle pushing her back against the desk, his teeth on her flesh a warning given so often it’s lost all meaning. Kastor keeps his hair cropped shorter than Damianos, his nose has been broken more often, he cares less for keeping clean-shaven. He so looks the part of the callous traitor, she sometimes thinks he revels in it. I showed you what I was, he will say over his father’s body, and still you ignored me.

“Why wait?” he says to her, making his voice rough, quiet even in her soundless rooms. “The southern kyroi are sworn to me, and my father could die in days with a bit of help. The throne is mine to take.”

She turns his head left to right, watching the lines that crease his face like leather when he smiles. “Too hasty by half,” she says. “Scylax of Isthima wavers, and I still believe Neokles of Calydon could be swayed.”

“Neokles is an ailing fool, he’ll die before he swears one way or another.” He drags his hands up her sides, hard and proprietary. “And Isthima will bow so long as I have the navy lords, as you yourself convinced me.”

“We will only have one chance at this, I want us to be absolutely certain. Even waiting a few more weeks for the season to cool might mean we lose fewer loyal men in the attack.” He almost nods, leaning back from her. “And we must decide what to do with your brother, we will need to be careful—”

“I’m going to slit his throat myself, Jokaste,” Kastor says, low, cold, his fingers pressing new bruises overtop his brother’s. “Exactly how careful need we be?”

She’s distracted still, careless. Is she Damianos, to not remember the force of Kastor’s hatred? To not recall exactly how near the long drop to violence he positions himself every moment?

She keeps her expression arch, her body supple in his grip. His attempts at intimidation are never worth indulging. “Tch.” Her tongue clicks sharply against her teeth. His eyes on her are festering. “You think a dead man cannot inspire rebellion? Your hold on this country must be absolute, my dear. I don’t intend for Damianos to become a martyr for the North.”

The night is hot and motionless, the smell of the orchards as thick as tar. “Caution in how we handle his disposal, Exalted,” Jokaste says to her lover, a sweet purr, the pad of her finger grazing his jaw. “That’s all I ask. Akielos will bow to you, not some memory of a younger son.”

She must wait one last moment, and then Kastor grins.

“You always have thought ten steps ahead of me,” he says to her, a purr returned, and her mistake was so ridiculous in the first place she refuses to allow herself relief at its remedy. “You’ll make such a queen.”

She agrees with him. She kisses him. When his hand slides up her thigh, parting the fold of her chiton, she doesn’t stop him. She’s tender still, but he won’t notice.

She will make such a queen. She will. She has worked all her life for nothing else. She will be queen to Kastor-Exalted, who pulls loose her hair despite her scolding, who kisses her bared neck and tells her she’s beautiful, and not his brother. _Not_ Damianos.

Kastor turns her body, pressing her forward until the edge of the desk leaves a mark across her belly, fisting his cock as he bites at the back of her neck. She ruts back against him, breath heavy.

She has no promises from Damianos, no guarantees more secure than some love-addled whisper in a darkened room. The way he’d looked at her as she rode his cock— that, just that, and nothing more.

She hisses when Kastor paws at her sore breasts, and he laughs, rumbling, in her ear. “Like that, do you?” he says. He pinches her nipple, hard, and she grits her teeth and doesn’t stop him. He does what he wants, she gets what she wants, he is a dog too old to learn new tricks. It’s insignificant. She will be queen. She will be loved. Both of Theomedes’ sons repeat the sins of their father, both of them are so likely to take a slight at their honor as an excuse for war, Damianos is _not_ an exception to this, but Kastor at least she can control, Kastor she can bind to her will.

His cock in her is good, thick and pleasurable despite her aches. She gasps when he thrusts up, hard, jolting her against the desk, and he digs his teeth into her nape and does it again. Damianos left a mark on here there. He’s always so predictable.

The Veretians are involved now but she can delay. She can squeeze a few more weeks from Kastor, a month even, if she is careful and clever. It will be enough. She’ll figure out what do with Damianos.

She... doesn’t want to kill him.

Her body rebels at the knowledge, her gut twisting, her arms shaking but it’s not— it’s no concern. She has time. She will make a plan. He will be dealt with appropriately.

The lamp on her desk nearly topples when Kastor comes inside her, shuddering, sweat running thick between their bodies. She finishes herself off as he heaves for breath against her back. His body is a sweltering weight. She feels slightly sick.

 

* * *

 

The feeling doesn’t go away.

In the morning Jokaste vomits three times into a basin Kyrina holds over her lap and realizes she’s pathetically, _childishly_ close to tears. “Could you have eaten something disagreeable at the feast?” Kyrina is asking her, quickly setting down the fouled basin to wipe at Jokaste’s mouth with a rag, but there’s a quaver in her voice. Neither of them are idiots.

Her blood is supposed to come next week. It’s not going to.

“Get back,” Jokaste rasps, throat still raw with bile, “and get rid of that somewhere.”

She will surely keep vomiting, but for the moment her stomach is empty. She stands and pushes away from her pitying handmaiden and paces like she means to wear her feet to bony red nubs.

Her self-deceptions frayed slowly in the night and then all at once, as the sun rose. Now the morning is high, and the fruit, the fucking _fruit,_ rots beneath the sunny boughs outside her window and threatens to sicken her again with its stench. Her mind casts out in every direction, searching for some answer, searching for _time,_ she had found herself _time,_ but the House of Theomedes grows within her and her feet will wear holes in the carpet. Her roving hands drop from her hair and brush her belly. She can’t bear to touch it. Kyrina is looking at her again and Jokaste is going to tear the woman to oozing scrap.

“I could go into town,” Kyrina says when Jokaste has her back to her, “I could find some pennyroyal—”

Jokaste’s laugh hollows out her chest. “And if anyone found out?”

“My lady, I would never tell—”

_“I do not trust you.”_

Kyrina flinches back. Jokaste is brutally glad.

“I can no longer delay for his benefit,” Jokaste says to herself, to them both, as Kyrina kneels with a lap full of vomit and flushes a darkening red, “the child must be Kastor’s, it _must_ be if anything is to survive this, no one can question it, Damianos must—”

He must—

Damianos must die and she must marry Kastor and the child she bears _will_ be sired by the King.

She picks up a beautiful, mold-blown glass vase from the sill of her open windows, and hurls it into the wall. Kyrina screams.

“Get out,” she snarls at her handmaiden, littered with glass. “Go find Prince Kastor, tell him I need to speak with him _now._ And send someone to clean this up!” she shouts, as Kyrina runs for the door.

It slams closed behind her. Jokaste stands alone in a room that stinks of vomit and the summer harvest.

She’s not even certain she wanted children. She knew she would have them, of course, she knew what her life would entail. But she asks herself if she wanted this and her mind’s only reply is blank, like a mirror, like an open sky.

She has worked herself from stupor into a fury— mad at Kastor, mad at Damianos, mad at _herself,_ how could she _possibly—_ by the time the door opens again, and Jokaste nearly laughs when she twists to see the honey-colored slave girl enter. That they should all be so _lucky._ “Did your master send you to me?” she asks the girl, her own voice needling and unkind.

“Kyrina—” the slave starts, eyes huge, clinging to the door, “I was in the hall, my lady—”

Jokaste doesn’t care. “Pick up the glass,” she says, and waves a stiff hand as she turns and resumes her pacing.

She tries to force herself through a plan as the girl scurries past her and comes up empty. There is no way to save Damianos’ life without jeopardizing her own, no way to keep him safe from his brother, and she is astonished that she has somehow come to believe there is _reason_ to— his kindness to her does not excuse his ignorance. Childish optimism and a skilled swordarm does not entitle him to life, or to her efforts on his behalf. Damianos is going to die and Jokaste is going to let him, she is going to—

“Move,” she snaps at the slave girl when the silly thing does not get out of her way in time. The girl prostrates herself immediately, face hovering above shards of glass, and Jokaste looks away in distaste. The palace-trained slaves make her skin crawl, their ritualized obedience something she has never gotten used to. This one, bred for Damianos himself, is—

Jokaste stops, staring down at the girl.

“Get up,” she says, “Lykaios.”

The girl rises quickly, eyes still fixed to the floor as she kneels at Jokaste’s feet. Her hands are trembling, making her wrist cuffs rattle.

“Why did he always ask for you?” Jokaste asks, thoughts suddenly quiet, all fears subsumed. “What purpose did your presence serve?”

The girl opens her mouth and stops, soundless, as Jokaste reaches out to touch her cheek, pushing her nails through the golden hair above one ear. “Don’t speak,” she tells the girl, soft. “You don’t know the answer. You don’t know a thing.”

She takes a step closer, looking directly down at the trembling slave, and pushes a finger into the girl’s mouth.

“What do you _do,_ Lykaios?” she asks. “What do you have power over? Who will mourn your death?”

The girl’s eyes are screwed shut, her fear as strong in the air as the dead summer fruit. But she does not pull back when Jokaste slides a second finger into her mouth, feeling her wet tongue, the smooth shapes of her teeth. She keeps her mouth open, pliant and good.

“Why not swallow your tongue while you have the chance?” Jokaste asks her, and does not look away from the thin line of drool down Lykaios’ chin when the door opens again.

“I— your Ladyship,” Kyrina says from the door, her voice strange.

Jokaste feels alight suddenly, unburdened, and she takes her time drawing her fingers from Lykaios’ mouth and wiping them dry across the girl’s cheek.

“Yes, Kyrina?” she says.

“Prince Kastor is just behind me, my lady,” Kyrina says, curtsying quickly when Jokaste turns. Lykaios does not rise from her kneel beside her. “We must get you ready, I’m sorry I could not give you more time.”

“Of course, it’s not a problem,” Jokaste says, and Kyrina betrays her shock as Jokaste smiles. “Don’t worry yourself, Kyrina, I’ll be fine. I’ve just had a wonderful idea about Prince Damianos.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hi Nabielka, happy holidays. As this fic focuses on Jokaste immediately pre-canon, it does include pregnancy, which I'm sorry about. If it helps, she's incredibly unhappy about it and its physical effects, except for soreness and morning sickness, are not described in detail. I hope you can enjoy the fic regardless.
> 
> Thanks to Lily, who is very sweet when I'm panicking, and to Emma, who did her usual stellar beta duties. I know she'd find my gratitude much more convincing if I'd actually taken the title from Cher lyrics, as she requested.
> 
> On tumblr [@lambergeier](https://lambergeier.tumblr.com/) and twitter also [@lambergeier](https://twitter.com/lambergeier/).


End file.
